Nearly 1.5 million kilometres of submarine cables criss-cross the globe. The infrastructure is key for both national security and economic stability. But an uptick in disruptions – notably in the Baltic Sea – has focused attention on the need to safeguard these networks. While many of the outages appear accidental, some can be attributed to sabotage by state-sponsored actors. 

Raoul Jacquand, Vice President for Strategic Alliances and External Affairs at Alcatel Submarine Networks, says that undersea telecoms infrastructure is a new geopolitical and economic battleground. "This infrastructure carries 99 percent plus of the world's internet traffic. So it is of strategic importance – it can damage societies, companies at large, if indeed this infrastructure is in danger on a large scale." 

Jacquand notes that artificial intelligence is also reshaping the map of cable networks. "AI will bring more traffic to transit between data centres. And data centres today need to be located where energy is cheap and abundant."